Chris Hemsworth Gets to the ‘Heart of the Sea’

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(L-r) SAM KEELEY as Ramsdell and CHRIS HEMSWORTH as Owen Chase in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' action adventure "IN THE HEART OF THE SEA," distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures. Photo by Jonathan Prime - Warner Bros.

Photo illustration by Kay Scanlon/LANG

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(L-r) Director/producer RON HOWARD, CHRIS HEMSWORTH and SAM KEELEY on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' action adventure "IN THE HEART OF THE SEA," distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures. Photo by Jonathan Prime - Warner Bros.

“We began with the whale,” says Ron Howard about his new film, “In the Heart of the Sea.”

While Chris Hemsworth is the star of the film, the Oscar-winning director says that even as he was casting and scouting locations, the conversation always came back to what the nature of the whale would be.

“I just kept saying, I want to be as rigorous about it as I can be. I want the authenticity in this to be as significant as it was on ‘Apollo 13.’ ”

Based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 bestseller of the same name, “In the Heart of the Sea” is something of a seafaring cousin to Howard’s earlier film about American astronauts facing impossible odds in the vastness of space. His new film, opening in 2-D and 3-D on Friday, tells the true-life tale of Essex, an 1820 whaling ship out of Nantucket whose violent encounter with an aggressive giant bull sperm whale in the South Pacific became the inspiration for the classic novel “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville.

At the time whale oil — obtained from the head cavities of sperm whales — was widely used for lighting and heating purposes. Whale hunting was big business then, although it looks cruel and primitive now. Essentially, wooden ships would venture across the oceans, and once a whale was spotted, small boats would be dispatched to get close to the creature. Then men would harpoon it and essentially butcher it to death.

The Australian actor Hemsworth, 32, says the film was an education for him about the times and the industry. “They must have had some sort of remorse or sadness about the brutality they were inflicting, but it was their job. They didn’t have a choice,” he says.

The actor had to learn to how to throw a harpoon for the role. “It’s just throwing like javelin,” says Hemsworth, who throws a hammer in his “Thor” films. “As horrific as it was, they must have been strong human beings.”

Some of the “Heart of the Sea” filming took place on an actual sailing ship on open water, but a good portion of it was shot a replica in a massive water tank at Leavesden Studios in England where the actors were violently tossed around by wave machines. Later scenes, when the Essex crew is trying escape the wrath of the whale in small boats, were shot off the Canary Islands.

To make it as realistic as possible, the actors were also put on a strict diet, so they would match the gaunt, hungry looks needed for a starving crew.

“When we were in the Canary Islands, it was a logistical nightmare to get on and off on these small boats. So you’re basically there on them all day. not eating a lot and living and breathing each others’ company,” Hemsworth says with a laugh. “It wasn’t hard to look exhausted and hungry.”

The director says he talked to other actors who had shot films where they had been on strict diets, including longtime collaborator Tom Hanks, who had gone through it on “Philadelphia” and “Castaway.” “He gave me some insights into what it required and psychologically where the challenges were,” Howard says, adding that he didn’t like being tough on the actors “but I made it clear to them going into it that this was going to be my expectation.”

Of course, the men also had to be very fit, and so Howard scheduled tough workout sessions for the cast. He credits Hemsworth and Ben Walker, who plays the Essex’s captain, and Cillian Murphy, who portrays the second mate, for taking leadership roles in both getting the actors first into shape and then losing weight.

Howard scheduled filming to coincide with the men’s condition. “When they were beginning to starve, their skin starting to go pale and their eyes started to lose their sparkle,” he says, “I would see the actors isolate themselves more. I would look over at somebody and they would be just staring at their feet, miserable.”

Hemsworth says he was been swept away by the epic adventure of “Heart of the Sea” when he read the script, “Breaking down the experiences of these guys struck a whole lot of chords with me.”

The actor had passed the script to Howard when they were working together on “Rush,” a film about Formula One drivers that Hemsworth said he loved making. “The environment Ron creates on the set makes you feel free to experiment and take a risk. We have a wonderful collaborative relationship.”

The filmmaker hadn’t known about the events of the Essex, but thought it was an inspiring idea to make a movie about it. He also thought something else.

“When I read about the real Owen Chase, I felt that Chris was born to play the part.”

Both he and Hemsworth agree that the film benefited from leaps being made in visual effects technology. “You needed to be able to look into the soul of the whale, because in a way, he was sort of the heart and soul the movie,” says the actor.

Howard says he and his cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle were influenced by the way documentaries from National Geographic and others had filmed whales, but also looked at the style of the TV show “The Deadliest Catch” and footage from Greenpeace ships out protecting whales.

“I wanted as modern an approach as I could. I didn’t want people to see this in an arms-length way. I wanted it to be immersive and engaging,” says Howard. “There are a lot of surprising, thematically modern elements in the story, and I wanted to reflect that in the visuals in the film.”

The filmmaker also brought in marine scientists to advise them on the whale behaviors they were creating for the film. “The interesting thing is that they actually pushed it a bit farther in terms of the intensity, which was kind of a pleasant surprise,” says Howard.

Originally, “In the Heart of the Sea” was to be released last spring, but after test screenings Warner Bros. asked whether they could move the make it a holiday release. Since then, Howard has made another film, “Inferno,” the third in the Dan Brown mysteries starring Hanks, and is working on a Beatles documentary about The Fab Four’s touring days. Meanwhile, Hemsworth finished up filming the female reboot of “Ghostbusters” and “The Huntsman Winter’s War,” and he will return in a new “Thor” film.

Howard calls “In the Heart of the Sea” the most challenging movie he has ever done. “I think my experience with ‘Apollo 13’ gave me some confidence going into this film, but the storylines and themes in ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ were actually darker and more complicated,” the director says, adding, “No one working on the film shortchanged the opportunity. They went about it with complete integrity because they were reflecting real peoples lives.”

Rob Lowman began at the L.A. Daily News working in editing positions on the news side, including working on Page 1 the day the L.A. Riots began in 1992. In 1993, he made the move to features, and in 1995 became the Entertainment Editor for 15 years. He returned to writing full time in 2010. Throughout his career he has interviewed a wide range of celebrities in the arts. The list includes the likes of Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood to Kristin Stewart and Emma Stone in Hollywood; classical figures like Yo Yo Ma and Gustavo Dudamel to pop stars like Norah Jones, Milly Cyrus and Madonna; and authors such as Joseph Heller, John Irving and Lee Child. Rob has covered theater, dance and the fine arts as well as reviewing film, TV and stage. He has also covered award shows and written news stories related to the entertainment business. A longtime resident of Santa Clarita, Rob is still working on his first more-than-30-year marriage, has three grown children (all with master's degrees) and five guitars.